9-11: where I was

Since the trendy thing to do this past weekend was to tell your 9-11 story, I decided I'll tell mine.


I was in college, attending Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach, FL.  I was just starting what was supposed to be my senior year (I graduated in Dec 2002).  It was a Tuesday morning.  I got to campus around 8:15 as I normally did on Tuesdays for my 9:45 class.  Parking was always a pain on campus and since I lived off campus with two roommates, I usually got there early and played in the computer lab either on homework or just browsing the internet.  That morning I went to a computer lab and was moving e-mails from one mailbox to another since they were going to be doing some network maintenance a few days later. 

A little before 9 the director of computer services ran in and yelled "A PLANE JUST HIT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER!"  Since there was no TV in the lab, everybody started scrambling to open any website they could to try and follow.  By that point CNN, FOX, MSNBC, among others, were unresponsive.  Finally somebody in the lab thought to go to BBC America, which had some information.  At first we all thought it was an accident.  Since I was attending a mostly aviation school, there were a lot of pilots and investigators in training.  Then we got the news that a 2nd plane had hit the other tower.  We all then knew that it wasn't an accident.

I stayed in the lab until 9:35-9:40.  We still had no clue, but the school hadn't cancelled classes or anything yet.  I went to my class, my professor completely unaware what had happened.  He held class like nothing happened.  We got out of class around 10:45.  I met up with some friends for lunch when I found out that the towers had fallen.  I thought it was just the top, and was still in disbelief when one of my friends told me that it was both towers.  Then we got word about the Pentagon being hit.  I started to think about my dad and my sister.  My dad had gone down to "somewhere around DC" for a meeting, and my sister was working in northern NJ at the time.  I reached for my cell phone.  Where was it?  Crap!  My phone was back at my apartment! 

I had another class at 2:15.  I debated about going home, but decided with everything going on I would stay and wait.  One of my roommates went back to the apartment.  He didn't want to be on campus anymore.  We then saw the word about the FAA grounding all flights.   I sat in a computer lab, trying to e-mail both my sister and my dad.  I sat on AIM talking to some friends making sure they were ok.  I finally got an IM from one of my sister's friends that had gotten a hold of her.  Somehow she had talked to my dad and found out he was ok. 

Embry-Riddle never cancelled classes, even though almost every school and university in Florida did.  A lot of students were panicking, some not able to reach family and friends in NY and DC.  Later I would find out that several students lost friends and relatives that day.

In the following days, there was word that the FBI was on campus looking for information.  We found out later that one or two of the hijackers had learned to fly at Embry-Riddle.  It was disturbing, but at the same time a lot of us felt that there was no way to know what somebody would do with the knowledge they learned.  It would be like blaming a school for training a computer hacker or virus writer. 



Life certainly changed that day.  It's too bad that people don't remember what happened in the following days - people came together as one.  The country was united.  People were volunteering to help in any way they could.  And some were scared to death.  This was something that had never happened to the US.  People didn't know how to react.  Some still don't.

I remember my grandmother, who lived through World War II, thought she would never see another Pearl Harbor.  That's what a lot of us equated it to. 

Ten years later, we don't forget, but I think the message that day sent has been clouded.